Paul Ryan Tears Into IRS Commissioner: 'Nobody Believes You'

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) tore into IRS commissioner John Koskinen on Friday, saying he doesn't believe that many of ex-IRS official Lois Lerner's emails were lost.

Ryan told Koskinen during his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee that it was "misleading" to say the emails had been lost.

"That’s your problem. Nobody believes you," Ryan said.

Ryan went on to say claims that the emails were lost are "incredible" and "unbelievable."

"You can reach into the lives of hardworking taxpayers, and with a phone call, an email or a letter, you can turn their lives upside down," Paul said. "You ask taxpayers to hand us seven years of their personal information in case they're ever audited, and you can't keep six months of employee emails?"

Koskinen later said it was the "first time" in his "long career" that anyone had said they didn't believe him.

"I don't believe you," Ryan shot back.

The AP reported earlier on Lerner's emails:

Congressional investigators have shown that IRS officials in Washington were closely involved in the handling of tea party applications, many of which languished for more than a year without action. But so far, they have not publicly produced evidence that anyone outside the agency directed the targeting or even knew about it.

If anyone outside the agency was involved, investigators were hoping for clues in Lerner's emails.

The IRS was able to generate 24,000 Lerner emails from the 2009 to 2011 because Lerner had copied in other IRS employees. The agency said it pieced together the emails from the computers of 83 other IRS employees.

But an untold number are gone. Camp's office said the missing emails are mainly ones to and from people outside the IRS, "such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices."